“In other words, you’re a human being,” I suggested.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, grinning. “The truth is, in spite of everything, I’m hopelessly optimistic.”
Steven danced a little three-hundred-sixty-degree jig to demonstrate.
“So you think it may not be too late? You think you still might find what you’ve been looking for?”
“Since you seem to be willing to listen, I’ll tell you a little story. When I was around twenty years old, I was a very conventional kid. Along with most other things, I had conventional, white-middle-class taste in music. I liked popular rock bands like The Doors, Hendrix, Cream, that sort of thing. One day I paid a visit to the home of a guy I’d recently met at college. He had studied music, played classical guitar, and his tastes were somewhat more sophisticated than mine. At his suggestion, we listened to an album he’d just recently acquired and was obviously excited about: Miles Davis At Fillmore. Are you familiar at all with Miles?”
“That was a landmark album,” I said.
“You know it. Good. Anyway, I sat for the duration of the album, wondering what the hell this grinding cacophony of noise had to do with music. It was obvious to my friend that I didn’t get it. I must have looked like I’d bitten into a turd, or something. I was glad when the album ended, but a little embarrassed, too.
“Later that day, I started thinking about the experience, wondering why I’d only heard noise when my friend had obviously heard music. I was sure nobody in their right mind would willingly subject themselves to that kind of auditory punishment. But it was also obvious that a concert hall full of people had paid to do just that. There had to be something I was missing. By evening, I was so obsessed I went to Tower Records and bought the LP. I took it home, put it on the stereo and listened again. And again. After a second and third hearing, it was still just an irritating, jumbled racket. There were stretches of rhythmic consistency, bits of melody here and there, but it just didn’t come together. Still, I was determined. Then on the fourth try, about half way through the album, something clicked and I could hear it. Not only hear it, I was dumbstruck by how amazing, how beautiful it was.”
I suspected Steven was attributing more importance to the experience than it really merited. “That kind of thing isn’t so unusual, is it? You’ve probably had other similar experiences in your life, especially when you were a kid. Maybe everyone does. It reminds me of those optical illusions, like the duck/rabbit. Depending on how you look at it, your brain will interpret the image either as a duck looking in one direction or as a rabbit looking in the opposite direction.”
“You’re right, I think. But the point isn’t so much that the brain can process the same data in very different ways. In my jazz experience, one way of hearing the sounds was chaotic and ugly and the other way was ordered and beautiful. At first there was an absence of something. Then that absence was filled with beauty. With the duck/rabbit, either way, all I have is a rough sketch of a duck or a rabbit. Neither enriches my life. Neither offers any deep aesthetic pleasure. With the music, it was the beginning of an enduring love of jazz. But more importantly, what changed was something inside myself. I was suddenly able to do something that a moment before I could not do. Something happened up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head.
“And that,” I asked, not intending to sound skeptical, “makes you optimistic that something similar will happen again? Like what? Enlightenment?”
“Well,” he said, chuckling, “perhaps not enlightenment. That might be setting my sights a little too high. Maybe just a more comprehensive, more harmonious way of ordering my experience. The world is a lot like Miles was before I could hear it. Most of it seems ugly and chaotic. But that could just be me. Maybe it’s really ordered and beautiful in a way I just can’t see, yet.”
“How old did you say you were?”
“Yes, I know,” he sighed. “It’s getting rather late in the game. But it doesn’t seem so outlandish. I suppose all it really comes down to is being right about the world in some better, more useful way, so that when the unexpected happens, my opinions and beliefs, whatever knowledge and wisdom I have, are not undermined. I want the world to surprise me, but without pulling the rug out from under me.”
“It’s not easy having it both ways.”
“But with luck I think you can. That’s where my optimism kicks in. Despite all indications to the contrary, I have to tell myself there is a positive side to being sixty-two. I’ve had sixty-two years to listen to the world’s noise. Something could still click up here,” he said, tapping the side of his head again, “and I could start hearing music. Experience a kind of phase transition. Be able to see a little deeper into the world’s depths.”
“I don’t mean to disabuse you,” I said, “but it’s been my experience that when people think they’re plumbing the depths, what they’re really doing is losing touch with the surface. As the poet, Homero Aridjis, once wrote, ‘What we weave in solitude
